In 2024, when there are more than 2.5 million active Android devices worldwide, creating top-quality Android applications is more essential than ever. With users demanding a smooth, fast, and lag-free experience, App performance has become a crucial factor in Google Play. There are a variety of methods and best practices that developers can use to improve Android apps’ performance. In this article, we’ll go over the top ways to improve the performance of your Android application to be more efficient and flexible in 2024.
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Reduce App Size and Memory Usage
One of the simplest methods to boost performance is to decrease the size of your application and its footprint in memory. Big, bloated applications with excessive resources are slower to load and use up the system’s resources. Here are some suggestions:
- Compress media assets and images. Use TinyPNG or similar tools to make images more efficient.
- Eliminate unused resources like colours, dimensions, strings, etc.
- Allow ProGuard to reduce and obscure your code.
- Utilize on-demand resources instead of bundling everything.
- Be aware of memory leaks that can slow performance over time.
If you keep your app light and optimized, you’ll get smooth and silky-smooth animations for your UI and speedy loading times, even on devices with low-end specs.
Profile and Improve UI Rendering
The slow UI rendering is among the main factors affecting Android apps’ performance. If the main thread is busy by the application’s performance, frames will be skipped; animated videos will be sluggish, and apps will feel sluggish. Utilize the GPU profiler within Android Studio to identify expensive UI processes and optimize the performance of these operations. Some suggestions:
- Make simpler view hierarchy layouts and hierarchies
- Utilize simpler drawing shapes instead of PNGs.
- Use images with lower resolution or the WebP format.
- Work can be moved off the main thread by using the Workers
- Utilize hardware acceleration to make animations if it is possible.
Through careful profiling and optimization, you will be able to achieve a consistent high frame rate and flawless UI interactions.
Optimize Background Work
All background tasks, such as data syncing, downloading files, or processing images, can take up system resources and impact UI responsiveness. Here are some suggestions to improve background tasks:
- Use the WorkManager API to schedule deferrable work
- Establish foreground service for lengthy-running tasks
- Utilize Kotlin coroutines to carry out Asynchronous operations
- Be aware of memory and CPU use in the background
- Set the right thread priority using Process.setThreadPriority()
- Make the most of idle maintenance windows
You can avoid interrupting important user interactions in the background by proactively managing background tasks.
Improve Network Performance
Highly performing applications require optimal network operation. Unmanaged network requests can cause delays and jank. Make sure your application is using networks effectively by following these tips:
- Allow gzip compression on network responses
- Utilize OkHttp’s caching policy to prevent duplicate requests.
- Schedule and batch downloads are available during idle time
- Reuse data and load it into caches before the time
- Introduce graceful degradation in the event of inadequate network conditions
- Utilize Facebook’s Bolts framework to perform asynchronous tasks
With a smart management of network requests, the app will provide lightning-fast performance, regardless of the connectivity quality.
Monitor Performance Continuously
The best way to ensure long-term performance is to check your application for any regressions constantly. Built-in profilers within Android Studio allow you to monitor CPU utilization and memory usage requests to networks when debugging sessions are in progress. Furthermore, you can utilize robust crash reporting tools like Firebase Crashlytics to detect jank or lag issues impacting real-world users.
Other tools are:
- FPS counter for monitoring UI frame rates
- LeakCanary to identify memory leaks
- BlockCanary to track the main thread that is blocking
With the right monitoring implemented, you will quickly find and eliminate the causes of lag or sudden crashes.
Optimize App Startup Time
First impressions are crucial. Your app’s launch date can determine user retention. To speed up startup:
- Start components slowly at the first time of use, not at the time of app launch.
- The code that is required for the launch of the UI
- Prioritize the specific resources needed for the launch screen
- Put off non-critical work until the day after launch.
- Think about using a splash screen to reduce the perceived load time.
Making the effort to optimize the cold start of your app will significantly improve the user experience starting even before the first time you launch.
Share Workloads Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud-based platforms such as Google Firebase and AWS allow you to distribute computing and storage tasks effectively. Utilizing the cloud, it is possible to:
- Data processing offload to scale hugely
- Host static assets such as images on high-speed CDNs
- Utilize cloud functions to run your code with no servers
- Make use of cloud-based databases to perform at a large scale
- Make use of the automated scaling, load balance
Cloud infrastructure opens up nearly unlimited capacity for handling the massive demands of mobile applications.
Adopt the Latest Android Platform Features
Google continuously releases new APIs and features to assist developers in creating more efficient Android applications. Benefit from the recent platform enhancements:
- Use Android App Bundles for optimized delivery
- Multidex can be used to overcome DEX method limitations
- Migration to AndroidX libraries, such as Material Design 2
- Build using Android Studio Chipmunk to receive the most recent updates
- Target recent Android API levels like 33+
- Use Jetpack libraries like Room, WorkManager, etc.
Staying current with the Android roadmap will ensure your app can utilise the latest performance improvements.
Choose the Right Programming Language
The language you design your application will affect the speed at which it runs. Beyond Java/Kotlin, consider:
- C/C++ code using the NDK to achieve native performance
- Golang to build quick and efficient mobile applications.
- React Native is a high-performance native for JavaScript applications
- Flutter for speedy rendering with Dart framework
The choice of language best suited to your needs allows you to utilise the Android platform’s power fully.
Improve Testing and Deployment
Beyond the code of your app, be attentive to your release and testing processes:
- Automate testing workflows to spot bugs earlier.
- Allow faster incremental builds on CI systems.
- Analyze the sizes of APK/AAB across different the different builds
- Release OTA updates to avoid the app store review
- Regularly release to stay caught up.
With the help of streamlined testing and deployment processes, new enhancements to performance are quickly accessible to users.
Read More: Hiring Android developers for Customize app development in the USA
Choose the Right Hardware and Form Factors
Take into consideration the performance of apps when making a selection of screens and devices to target. To ensure optimal speed:
- The design is geared towards middle-range and entry-level devices, not only flagships
- Make sure you test thoroughly on all screen sizes that you can support
- Benchmark memory, CPU, and GPU to determine the minimum requirements
- Reduce resolution/effects on devices with low RAM/CPU devices.
Select your preferred devices instead of trying to support all devices and ensure a constant speedy experience.
Measure Real User Impact
Ultimately, users’ satisfaction is more important than the vanity metrics for performance. Be sure to measure the real-world impact of your efforts regularly:
- Study user behaviour flow patterns for speed bottlenecks
- Collect feedback about the perceived performance
- Correlate metrics, such as frames that have been dropped and the app’s ratings
- A/B test UIs change with a small portion of users
While tracking benchmarks is good, it has its place; it is important to focus on improvements that result in happier, more enthusiastic users.
Hire Specialized Android Developers
To ensure that you are implementing the best performance practices, work with experts Android developers in USA. Find expertise in:
- Kotlin/Java languages, as well as Android SDK
- Analysis of mobile app performance
- Battery, memory, and compute optimization
- Tooling like Android Studio, emulators, profilers
- Experience using the Android UI, databases and concurrency
Particularly trained Android developers will carefully build and optimize your application for speedy performance.
Hire dedicated Android Developers in the USA through TechGropse
If you’re ready to develop an extremely fast Android application, consider hiring skilled TechGropse designers. Based in the USA, TechGropse is the best choice for hiring experienced Android developers to build your customized projects.
TechGropse Android developers are extremely skilled in the following:
- Optimizing Android apps to speed and responsiveness
- Improved UI animations and rendering
- The ability to manage background tasks effectively
- In reducing memory use and battery consumption
- Debugging performance issues quickly
- Continuously reviewing and continuously improving the performance of your business.
With the help of senior Android designers from TechGropse, you benefit from their experience in developing speedy, smooth Android applications that users will appreciate.
Professional developers from TechGropse concentrate on your project, acting as an extended team of you. You will have complete transparency and IP security because TechGropse developers collaborate with your team using your tools and systems. With a specific developer model, it is possible to expand and contract teams depending on the changing requirements of the project. Pay only for the amount you need at any moment.
TechGropse allows users to begin with quick startup time and minimal onboarding requirements. Their skilled developers are well-versed in the best collaboration tools and practices. For the best Android developers who are geared toward developing mobile app experiences that are 5-star and leveraging the expertise of dedicated developers from